Ramblings on bookish matters. Horror and fantasy have the lion’s share, but not exclusively. Occasional interviews, art posts and bumblings.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Cover art - Romanian edition

The Romanian cover artwork has no soul, as much as I would like this aspect to be different. Rarely you can see a spectacular book cover, one that will make a casual buyer pick up the book from the bookshop shelves without any consideration for the title or the author of that particular book. But although this is the general line I am happy to see that little gems find their place among the countless stereotypical Romanian book covers. And for this I have to thank once again the small publishing house, Millennium Press, although its books don’t reach the bookshops in my town. I repeat myself, but the efforts of Millennium Press deserve every attention it can get, because on a struggling speculative fiction market it gives every fan moments of joy. Not only that Millennium Press publishes speculative fiction, but it stretches out a helping hand to the Romanian speculative fiction authors and also treats with more care the aspects of cover artwork.

Its recently efforts count a SF Romanian magazine in physical format, something missed for some time here. Galileo offers in 240 pages a chance to the Romanian speculative fiction to pick up speed. The cover of the first issue you can see here is made by the Polish artist Adam Tredowski.

The mass market paperback of the Romanian edition of John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” benefits from a wonderful cover artwork made by the Romanian artist Mihai Titoiu. This cover proves that we have talent not only on the writing scene, but also on the art one. Sadly, many local publishing houses are indifferent to them.

Last, but not least, my favorite. This summer Millennium Press will release a collection of stories by Michael Haulică, “Povestiri Fantastice” (Fantastic Stories). The volume gathers stories written in the last thirty years by Michael Haulică and its cover is made by the French artist Ludovic Cordelières. I absolutely love this cover, one that makes me think of fantastic worlds and situations. I would certainly pick this book even though the author would be a mystery to me.

I really hope that other publishing houses in my country will find inspiration in the work made by Millennium Press, because this small press shows there is hope after all for a better quality in the Romanian cover artwork.

Aspoiu, the cover for "Dansind pe Marte..." is great too, I featured that one as well. I am glad to see that Romanian artists such as Alex Popescu and Mihai Titoiu get their chance to make book covers :)